Insights & Solutions

The goal for this project was to renovate two fifty-year-old patient wings into private rooms in a cost effective way for Butler County Health Care Center. The hypothesized outcomes resulting from the patient room design interventions included fewer patient and staff falls and favorable patient satisfaction scores.

Behavioral health settings guided by strict safety design measures often result in spaces that are stark, plain, and isolated - potentially exacerbating environmental stressors and escalating already difficult patient situations. Acute care emergency settings have a particular set of challenges as EDs are predicting increased visits from behavioral health patients. Faced with the challenge of designing a behavioral health care setting in the Emergency Department at UnityPoint Health in Rock Island, IL, the project team hypothesized that the creation of a Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) with a “Living Room Concept” would provide a higher quality of care to patients while assisting in the staff’s ability to quickly consult and treat a diverse set of patients entering the ED. 

The era of accountable care has focused more attention on doing things right. Hospitals are no longer reimbursed for what are categorized as "never events," serious adverse events that are largely preventable. The Center for Health Design, with support from the Facility Guidelines Institute and a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), has been working toward a consensus-based tool to proactively assess safety and risk in the built environment during the design process. New language will be incorporated into the 2014 Guidelines for the Design and Construction of Healthcare Facilities.

Developed through extensive review of research, surveys, site tests, and review and validation by expert advisory council members, this standard set of evidence-based design checklists and post-occupancy evaluation (POE) tools can be used by interior designers to apply research to healthcare design projects and to conduct post-occupancy evaluations of three types of hospital patient rooms: adult medical-surgical, adult intensive care, and maternity care.